Musings, diatribes and dialogues from one of Chicago's quirkiest musical psychologists. This and that and rat-a-tat-tat.

Sunday, November 4, 2012

Circadian Rhythms From the Offbeat Drummer

It's 5:00 am. But it's 6:00 am. Actually, that sentence took me an hour to type. So now it's 6:00, except my body thinks it's 7:00 am. I'm definitely *not* manic. I am utterly exhausted. Went to bed around 1:30 am last night, thinking "Oh hell, it's really only 12:30 am, and I get that extra hour, so I'll set the coffee to start at 8:00 am!" Reasonable, right? Except that I woke up at 4:50 am, and couldn't get back to sleep. Daylight Savings Time always screws me up, whether I gain or lose an hour.

At last online recollection, I was answering some comments on my Life Development forum, but intelligently, unlike what I posted in my last blog. The trouble is, I'll probably be boggled with hypersomnia by about 10am (if not earlier) and crumble back into bed, and I have to get my hair cut at noon today. Oh, and write a 5-page Ethics paper (yes, APA-cited, shit).

School has taken its toll on my sleep schedule a quarter of the way through my graduate education. By Thursdays, I am clumped between the sheets for 4-hour stretches, dead to the world...a pattern that repeats the rest of the weekend. No, I don't want to hear my physician friends tell me I'm being a wuss because they survived it in medical school. They were like 25 at the time. I'm 40. I also don't want to hear it from my jet-setting friends, who return home with raging jet lag because while I sympathize, they're getting paid gobs of money. My face is caving into my Theories book on Wednesday mornings at 9am, which seems strange, as I used to go to work around that time, and I'd function just fine. But understand, 90% of my job at the medical practice was fueled by adrenaline and coritsol (the stress hormone) and Theories class is just one giant snooze-a-thon in a 3-hour stretch. PS--the next time I'm sitting next to my student therapist during the Wednesday morning 8 am weekly seminar, literally drooling asleep, it'd be super if he would do me the favor of at least nudging me out of REM stage so I can pretend to be involved.

I stayed conscious at last week's seminar, chiefly because the guest speaker from the Center for Learning and Teaching was almost screaming and throwing books at us. No joke. With an emphatic thrust, she whacked us over our heads with...

She was all "If you DON'T own this book, BUY IT NOW! ESPECIALLY IF YOU WERE AN.....ENGLISH MAJOR!!!! and are used to MLA style writing. This is PSYCHOLOGY. FOLLOW THE APA MANUAL!" After diagnosing her with schizoid personality disorder, having my laptop out, I tuned her out, went on Amazon and ordered the god-forsaken manual. I was thinking to myself, "Look here, Sister Sledge, give me 20 minutes and I could write a sonnet about what an utter cunt you're being to us right now, but I'm busy ignoring your hostile ramblings and nervously fidgeting with my piercings."

APA-style citation and writing doesn't come naturally to me. Its nuances upset the flow of my thoughts, interrupt my logic and my last Theories paper, being inked up with "RUNNING HEAD, RUNNING HEAD" on each page pissed me off for reasons I've previously discussed at length. I'd give you a "running head" out-the-door if I wasn't 3/4 of the way dead ass asleep in the first place. I'll figure it out. I'm certainly not, well, STUPID.

This week's dunce cap has to embarrassingly go to VP contender Paul Ryan, who takes reshitulous idiocy to a whole new level of achieving the moniker of "Tool." We liberals weren't duped by his photo-op washing of already-clean pots at a soup kitchen, his visionary notion of economics under a Republican presidency make about as much sense as reducing the national debt with bags of split peas, and give me a break, what the fuck is this?

Vying for the Country's Most Boring Job Unless There's a National Crisis That Grossly Incapacitates The Prez, Otherwise You Just Ride the Coattails of the Commander-in-Chief, attracting impressionable GOP youngins with his weight-curling, "I want to arm wrestle Joe Biden" publicity stunt worked against him, as both conservative and liberal, uh, sane people sat back and laughed at his clueless smirk as he tried to impress voters with the fact that Rage Against the Machine was his favorite band. (It'd be more ironic if Tool was his favorite band, but whatever.) Rage's bassist, Tim Commerford, publicly declared Ryan a "jackass" and "the embodiment of the machine our music rages against."

Wow. That's too bad.

I'd be really bummed out if *my* favorite band thought I was stupid. They may find me irretrievably needy and annoying at times, but one thing they know is that I'm not an idiot. Paul Ryan? Might I suggest your party stick with fervent, off-key, clearly-drunk-again, has-been crooner-come-bit part actor Meatloaf, whose rendition of "America the Beautiful" at a Mitt Romney rally was the embodiment of literally everything that's wrong with falling off the wagon in public with millions of people watching...or as I like to call it, "I Could See Paradise By the Dashboard Light If Not For the Flashing Police Car Behind Me, Ready To Pull Me Over for the World's Worst DUI." Watch Romney stand there saying to himself, "My life is over and now the USA has proof that I'm a dickwad."

Further wadding of Republican dick-dom came out via the national press yesterday, when it was revealed that as a freshman student at Stanford University, the khaki-wearing, blazer-donning, penny-loafer walking Romney skipped his Western Civilization class one day. I thought, "Wow! I actually have something in common with this Jag Bag!" as I skipped the whole term of Western Civ in college because it conflicted with my daily viewing of "All My Children," in which I was engrossed, a class I'd attend so sparsely that I failed. But Romney wasn't sacrificing his studies to watch soap operas. Heavens, no. You can bet your Blessed, Miraculous Mormon Underpants Kissing the Ass of Joseph Smith that he had a larger cause over which to rally.

Try and follow me here. I know it's early in the morning and you're scrambling to get your clocks right before you accidentally go to church an hour early. Romney was participating in an anti-anti-war protest over the war in Vietnam. A) Bad move when you're a governor's son. B) Holding up a sign that says "Oppose Anarchy" in that kind of outfit sets you up for a really good ass-kicking. C) An anti-anti-war protest is a double negative, which is actually a pro-war demonstration, right? The Dems haven't forgotten the factoid that Romney effectively dodged the draft in Vietnam FOUR TIMES while on "Mormon mission trips" under the umbrella of being a "student of divinity." He'd go on to follow his governor father's lead on the war position, backpedaling being anti-anti to pro-pro, and saying one year that he had no desire to serve our country in the military, then retracting that to say that he actually "longed" to be in Vietnam to aid our country's war effort. His like 187 sons followed suit and shunned military service to spread the disease of Mormonism far and wide, just like dear old dad. M'kay.

I can't wait for Tuesday to be over, to celebrate my President's victory and put all this political tension bullshit behind me, which has worn out my brain. Four years ago today, I was in Grant Park at the Obama rally amid at least a million people who fist-pumped in unison with, well, 90% of the rest of country, as the buildings downtown were all lit patriotically in favor of our hometown hero. USA!